Fountains Falls – our first FTF

To some people geocaching is about the numbers, to some it’s a casual hobby, a sport, a game, or even a lifestyle. Geocaching can be anything you make it, but it cannot be disputed there are certain milestones and achievements that can make the geocacher feel good about the activity – “First to Finds” (FTF) are one such milestone.

The probability of you getting an FTF depends on a number of factors – such as the geocache density in your area, number of active geocachers, whether you’re regularly checking email alerts from geocaching.com, time of day, or just plain luck. I listen to a few geocaching podcasts where they talk about “First to Find Hounds” (people who put a lot of their geocaching energy into being the first to find a newly listed cache), and “First to Find Parties” (where one may go to seek out a FTF and come across other cachers in there area with the same intention).

So when I noticed an email from geocaching.com about a newly-listed cache only 4km from my home co-ordinates, I did get a little bit excited. The new cache was a medium-sized hide by local cacher Shifter Brains, called Fountains Falls (GC1KPMX). The alert came in very early in the morning as I was getting ready for work.  I figured we’d be out of luck… surely somebody else would beat us to the cache. It was frustrating knowing there was a brand new cache so close to home, yet I couldn’t get a chance to seek it out for another 12 hours. The odds of getting a FTF on this one now seemed slim.

At work I thought about the cache some more. Using my iPhone I checked out the route to the cache on google maps, even looked at the street view so I could be familiar with parking, and location of the track. The day passed slowly, and finally at about 4pm TeamWolfie made their way up to the location for a possible FTF. The online log was still empty, so we were hopeful.

There were two ways to access this cache. We chose the “short” option – about a 600m walk down a fairly well formed fire trail. GZ was close to a beautiful stream running through the bushland. Our iPhones guided us up another track running parallel to the stream as we closed in on GZ. 

Wolfie Enjoying the Creek Nearby

Hoping to get a better fix I punched in the numbers on our Mio DigiWalker – which is designed really as an in-car navigator but we find it quite accurate on the track. The Mio and the iPhones seemed to be matching up and indicating a location just off the track. Time to put the GPSRs away now and rely on the TeamWolfie geosenses… tried one minor trail or animal-track first with no luck, then tried another one and quickly noticed something that didn’t look quite right. Yes – it was the cache. Woo Hoo !

Now the anguish and excitement builds to see if we are indeed the FTF. We carefully remove the cache, and open it. So clean, so new, so very well stocked with nice things. Wow. I’d never seen a cache so new and full of nice new things before. Time to open the log book. YES – It’s Empty!  We are FTF!!

Travel Bug going into new home

We do our caching deeds: signed the log book (and gloated about our first FTF), we took a Bottle Opener and left a Travel Bug, then carefully resealed the cache and placed it back in it’s hiding spot – leaving it exactly how we’d found it.

Wolfie under the Waterfall

After this we did a spot of exploring on the opposite side of the track and found a really nice little waterfall where the stream was running through. Being a hot day, TeamWolfie took the opportunity to cool down and enjoy our moment of satisfaction, knowing we now have a FTF under our belt.

Proud to be the FTF Fountains Falls

Thanks to Shifter Brains for another awesome cache in a great location. You’ve really been giving TeamWolfie a lot of caching to do and we appreciate it.

A Swell Place

It was by shear accident we stumbled upon this geocache whilst out on a Boxing day drive around the local area. TeamWolfie had been sitting at home, full of Christmas cheer – when it was decided to get out of the house to see what the locals are up to. We’d deliberately decided NOT to go geocaching today – this was to be a simple relaxing drive. No pressure, no maps, no plans.

Our drive took us over toward busy Terrigal, then up to the more quiet Forrester’s Beach where we decided to check the headland with the communications tower on top. After driving as far as the road would take us, we turned the car and headed back down the hill when something on the screen of my GPSr caught my attention. There was a waypoint on my in-car GPSr navigator right near our current location – indicating a cache was nearby up on the headland.

A use Mio Digiwalker C510 for my in-car navigator – I bought this long before I knew anything about geocaching. These days my Mio is used for in-car and out-of-car activites. I find it to be very accurate when hunting for those caches in places where the iPhone lets me down. I have all the cache waypoints within a 20km radius of home loaded into the Mio which saves a lot of manual typing of coordinates. My “Points of Interest” (waypoints) are categorised, and I leave my Mio set up so the only waypoints normally visible on screen are geocache locations.

The Mio simply shows us the location, and the cache name “A Swell Place”.  Time to get out the iPhone and log into the geocaching app to get some more information… A Swell Place (GCHPZZ) by GeoMonkeys, Diffficulty: 2, Terrain: 2, Size: small.  We read the description, and recent logs, and had a quick glance at the hint before heading off up the track to get our find.

To get to the cache we parked in a nearby handy little parking bay, and walk up the track to the communications tower, and beyond. The views were spectacular to say the least.

A Swell Place, with Swell Views

Turned out to be a fairly easy find. I’m so glad we got out of the car and walked up to the top to take in the spectacular views. We’d left our normal geocaching backpack at home – so we had no swaps with us. Even Wolfie, our trademark dog who loves having his picture taken at almost every cache we visit was resting at home this afternoon, guarding the Christmas presents!

It was a great accidental find, our 49th find in fact, and shows again what a handy tool the iPhone can be for those “unexpected” finds. Fantastic to stumble upon this great location. We signed the logbook, took nothing, left nothing. We’ll be back one day soon to explore more of the Coast Walk track when our stomaches aren’t so bloated from Christmas feasting. 

Thanks for the cache!

Sydney 2000 – pure iPhone Geocaching

If ever there was a cache to prove how handy an Apple iPhone can be for geocaching, this is it.  Sitting at work two days ago, bored, I loaded up Grounspeak’s Geocaching iPhone App and did a search on the caches close to work – one of these being Sydney 2000 (GC10ZKX) - a micro cache by zebrafive . Let’s check out how the cache details look on the iPhone.

Cache details on iPhone

Note: the above image has been modified to protect the location of this cache.

As you can see, we have full access to the cache information – including complete Description, recent Logs – and the all-important Hint. Inventory details are also normally available from this screen – but this cache has no inventory.

Let’s now press the Hint button and take a look at the clue for this cache…

The cryptic clue revealed.

Okay – so now lets go back to the cache screen, and we’ll tap on the Map button to see it’s location in Google maps on the iPhone.

Google Maps Pinpoint to the Location

Note: the above image has been modified to protect the location of this cache.

When I switched to Google Maps view I could see straight away – not only was this close, but it’s also right alongside a road I drive down most mornings (Harris Street) – thus making it a perfect early morning park-and-grab cache at 4am with a guaranteed absence of muggles.

Let’s now tap the little red “Person” icon on the pinpoint and see what Google Streetview shows me.

The location - can you find it?

Hmmm… first of six, last of nine… something about ventilation. Many cachers reading this now have probably picked the right spot already! All that’s left to do now is physically drop by the location – which I did at 4am today.

Except for the fact it was dark, I felt like I had been there in person already and had already “cased out” the area where the cache is, and put the clues together – which was true, but I had done it in a completely virtual environment using only my Apple iPhone, so when I got to the spot I already knew exactly where to park and what to grab, and where to grab it from.  

The only thing left to do now was take a picture – again, with the iPhone - 

Grabbed cache. Signed Log. Returned cache.

It was kind of a eerie feeling being so familiar with the place before I even got there, and shows what a powerful tool the iPhone can be for geocachers.  If I’d needed too I could have also written this blog entry with the iPhone using my WordPress App – but it’s keyboard makes it an impractical tool for typing long documents.

I can then use the iPhone to brag about my find on Twitter, using the Twitterrific application to instantly notify our friends who follow @teamwolfie on twitter, and even share pictures of the find with our followers.

The only thing missing from the Groundspeak iPhone App is the ability to log your find directly from within the application – but there is always the option to use Safari on the iPhone to visit geocaching.com and log the find using that method.

This is one case where the iPhone has proved very useful – being the ONLY tool needed to plan, seek, locate, and photograph this cache. Yes there are times when the GPS could be better – in fact, I didn’t even need to use the GPS function to locate this find, however, this device is primarily an iPod and a Phone – but it’s amazing you can actually do so much with the Apple iPhone and I’ve grown to find it to an indispensable tool for my geocaching, and in 90% of cases is the only tool I need for a successful find.

And when I’m not using my iPhone for geocaching, I’m using it to listen to geocaching podcasts! It is truly my all-in-one device.